


Lesbian Piracy

by glyphsinateacup



Category: Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton), Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-11 06:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15966725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glyphsinateacup/pseuds/glyphsinateacup
Summary: Five times that Alice Kingsleigh and Elizabeth Swann had a drink, and one time they didn’t





	1. Chapter 1

The sounds of battle had all but faded. The Pirate King, Elizabeth Swann, stepped between the swaying decks to survey what remained of her prize. The crew were on their knees, some bound, some at pistol-point; her first mate’s nod told her that all was secure. The King allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. This merchant vessel had put up a good fight, but victory was hers, as was their captain’s surrender. And the cargo, that too.

Her Majesty narrowed her eyes against the harsh glare, spied the lone standing uniformed figure, hatless, ringed by her crew, and called out, “I don’t have all day, Captain, it’s time for your surrender,” as she cut her way through the rows of prisoners. She had barely registered the conflicting cues of size and manner before that person pivoted and answered, seriously, in a woman’s voice: “Not yet, I think.”

It took Her Majesty a moment to recover the cadence of her authority. When she did, she couldn’t keep the edge of bafflement from it. “Captain Kingsleigh, of the Wonder.”

“Do I not seem captain-y enough for you?” Captain Kingsleigh’s face darkened with the stress on her words. Her hair was plastered to her face by sweat and she was flushed after the fight, but her anger was the more apparent coloring.

Her Majesty licked the spray from her lips before answering as blithely as possible. “You’re sailing on my seas and you do it well. I’d say you make a fair captain.” It was no lie, either; the chase and the fight had been much closer than any her crew had had for some months.

“And who says the seas are yours?” Captain Kingsleigh’s attention was immediately caught. Somehow, disheveled, demonstrably defeated, she could still radiate actual curiosity.

“Quite a lot of people say it,” King Swann snapped. “I’ll take your sword, now.”

“Actually,” said Captain Kingsleigh, “I believe we will come to an agreement."

The Pirate King realized that she ought to cut things off here. She should walk away now, lift her hand and wave dismissively before this woman reeled her into some unpredictable bargain. Instead she shifted her weight, folded her arms, and smirked into Captain Kingsleigh’s too-blue eyes. “You won’t find that you can convince me."

The stony cast of Captain Kingsleigh’s face melted into a Cheshire grin. “Impossible things are my specialty.”

 

Captain Kingsleigh laid out her bargain over small glasses of fine liquor, a rare gift liberated from her own now-plundered cabinets. And too soon gone, in the Pirate King’s opinion. They were both seated across Her Majesty’s table (Elizabeth had her feet up; Alice was sitting knees askew and leaning forward eagerly).

Her premise was irksomely simple. Only Alice, as Captain, knew to whom their cargo was worth anything more than a jumble of worthless trinkets.

“I do have a buyer. And to him, this is a lucrative voyage. But without that knowledge – knowledge I freely offer you- “(Here she gestured expansively. Elizabeth, for all her years of observing liars and tricksters, could not tell whether it was a studied movement or not, and that stung more than anything else) “without that, you’ll have nothing.”

Her Majesty swirled the last mouthful of her drink in its glass, watching Captain Kingsleigh’s continuing performance over the top of the cup. “And I suppose if I asked your crew, they couldn’t even give me a heading to the right port?”

“Oh no,” answered Captain Kingsleigh, her knowing smile playing out slowly. Compellingly. She could probably taste how close to convinced Elizabeth was. Damn. “They could give you a port. And your crew might even be able to dig up our other stops too, should they read the correspondence in my office.” Over her head, Her Majesty made brief eye contact with her waiting first mate, who had just enough wits to take that as instruction and leave to secure Captain Kingsleigh’s papers. “But my correspondence with this buyer is all in London, under lock and key.”

“And you’re willing to save me that trip?” Her Majesty, with loose posture and a distant expression, was using every tool she had to hide her interest. It was very nearly succeeding.

Captain Kingsleigh leaned forward across the narrow table. “Leave me my ship, my crew, and enough supplies to return home, and you will know everything.”

“I’ll think on it,” said Her Majesty. “You can go.”

Pausing at the door, Captain Kingsleigh bestowed a smile that was almost gracious. “You may finish that bottle with my compliments, King Swann, but at our next meeting you owe me for it.”

Her Majesty had already lost the fight to keep her expression foreboding.

 

Captain Kingsleigh’s ship was finally limping away. Her crew, somewhat the worse for the wear, were trying to reassemble order, less their hats, sabers, fob watches, and uniform coats. Her Majesty has allowed Captain Kingsleigh to keep her own coat, but it had been left folded over a railing and the Captain herself was jogging across the deck in her white shirtsleeves, climbing the rigging alongside her mates.

The Pirate King was watching from her own deck, perched upon one of the appropriated crates from the Wonder, trying not to track Captain Kingsleigh too closely.

After their agreement, the goods filled half her hold. But even upon looking inside, she couldn’t make head or tail of them. Bits of paper? Elaborately patterned chessboards? Mushrooms, and not the kind that are valuable in these parts. They could be more trouble than they were even worth, as she had already distributed a stern warning against testing them for more pleasant properties to a skeptical crew.

“Orders, Captain?” asked her first mate.

“What orders do you want? We have our bounty.” she answered without looking, her face still turned toward he horizon. Knowing that she was giving all appearances of brooding did very little good.

The mate stared up at her, a little bewildered. “Just like that? We’re letting them go on a word, and with our holds filled with garbage?”

Her Majesty let a smile creep onto her face. “Captain Alice Kingsleigh says they’re not garbage. And I’d like to see what kind of Captain she is.”


	2. Chapter 2

Two cities down the trade route and a month later, Alice Kingsleigh was balancing transactions between six – possibly seven - different vendors in a cheerfully clamorous warehouse. Her reputation remained solid, thankfully; the letter came three days ago when they landed, confirming the delivery of her goods to the buyer and the remaining payment to the captain of that ship, one Elizabeth Swann. If nothing else, it confirmed that the ship that the Pirate King sailed was as fast as it had seemed during their chase, for the report to have reached her that soon.

The entire affair put her at a slight loss for the voyage, but such was the cost of escaping from a tight spot. Insurance and her investors would cover the rest, in time.  
Captain Kingsleigh tucked her ledger between an elbow and her side and went down the row of stalls and crates with a critical eye, trying to recall the traits of quality cotton. Of the varieties on display here, she was certain two weren’t worth her time unless their respective sellers had lately reformed their ways, and the third gave her a feeling that wasn’t precisely bad, but probably meant more trouble than textiles were generally worth. And it was nearing noon and she needed to have at least a portion of her business completed before eating. And someone was following her.

The Pirate King was attempting subtlety, cap pulled low over her eyes, inconspicuous as a woman dressed like that could be, all in thick brocade exquisitely tailored for movement and worn by the sea-spray. Wearing trousers. Swaggering. Attempting, maybe, but she certainly wasn’t attempting very hard.

Alice spent a very successful fifteen minutes settling on prices for tableware and sewing goods before starting to make her way back to the far end of the warehouse where her own cargo was being assembled.

And yet she still had a shadow. A cheerfully humming, self-satisfied shadow, at whom the merchants either bowed or started trembling as though they had seen a ghost.

“I’d have thought that you saw your fill of _my_ goods on _my_ ship.” said Alice, pointedly. The lentils pouring between her fingers back into their sack seemed unspoiled, but she’d need to check with her cook before buying.

The Pirate King grinned - it escaped beneath the rim of her cap. “Oh, I didn’t come for those. I believe I owe you a drink, Captain Kingsleigh."

 

They sat down to mismatched glasses of rum in a bar so dark that the other drinkers were reduced to hulking shadows. It was decent stuff, barely gut-wrenching, and the glasses were even clean, which Elizabeth wrote off as the perks you get for being royalty. Even elected royalty.

Elizabeth saw the face that Captain Kingsleigh made when she downed her glass and laughed with an edge of wickedness.

“That is, in fact, the _worst_ drink I have _ever_ tasted,” Alice gasped between long pauses. “And I’ve had to drink some truly awful concoctions.”

“Captain Alice Kingsleigh can’t hold her liquor,” Her Majesty mused, one elbow on the bar and supporting her chin on the heel of that hand. She lifted it to signal for another drink.

“I will have you know that I can. Good liquor. And any number of other things.” Alice eyed her new glass suspiciously before lifting it. “This won’t make me larger or smaller or change me into a piglet or anything.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “I take it that your hold is currently full of potions like those.”

Captain Kingsleigh smiled into her glass. “How many of your crew tried eating the mushrooms?”

“Enough. Maybe I should have just let you sail on without taking them.”

Another swallow, another grimace. Then Alice glanced back at Elizabeth, curious. “I still say I should have outrun you in those shoals, in any case.”

“Captain Kingsleigh.” Her Majesty leaned in, again waving for more drinks. “I invented that trick.”

 

Alice was certain she looked sober, walking back to her ship. Her posture wasn’t too rigid with the pretense of it and she still had both her hat and her coat on. She didn’t walk down the wrong dock or stumble into barrels, but picked her way to the right pier and the right berth.

She was so close to success, but for steep swaying slope of the gangway. After a long stare at it – and at the glittering expanse of water below – and she had to lever herself woozily down onto the wooden planks to sit with as much dignity as she could muster.

Even as she was reassuring herself that a moment’s self-possession would be enough to settle her stomach, a tiny traitorous thought slipped through. _Was this her goal all along then? Enough good conversation to get me drunk, and then what?_

But Elizabeth had taken her leave nearly an hour before, and half the port away from here. A sudden goodbye on urgent, presumably illegal business, no tricks to be found. Leaving Alice with a mix of unaccustomed feelings, nausea among them.

If any of Alice’s crew had a theory about why their captain retired unusually early to a dark and silent cabin that night, they kept it to themselves.


	3. Chapter 3

Captain Kingsleigh was no longer used to waiting on the attendance of her clients.  Years ago, when she was younger, she had needed to do so: to plead with shipping houses to send business her way, to dress her hair and hold her tongue and intimate that some uncle was the real responsible party.  To soothe the minds of those who were unprepared to believe in a young woman with a reputation for oddity and even flightiness.

That was before she came to specialize fully in what she did now, in cargo that was somewhat… odd.  Cargo that other honest sailors didn’t precisely _believe_ in, that the established firms wouldn’t insure for anything near its full value.  That was before her ledgers were a comprehensive list of parties interested in moving the hint of the fantastical across the seas, before she knew who was ready to open their wallets to the suggestion of a little enchantment.  Word carried quickly between the right people, and the sort of respect that she could command from the sidelong community of collectors, enthusiasts, and characters was the sort that weighted conversations considerably in her favor.

She was used to carrying enough weight that it was surprising to not be sped directly into a drawing room or office, she realized, pacing the expansive gilded foyer of a customer’s expansive guided townhouse.  It was midmorning and she had come to the meeting alone, prepared to negotiate a deal that would take her and her crew on a journey that could last a year or more, looking after some cargo the client wouldn’t even disclose in writing.  She hadn’t expected the Duchess to be late to her own meeting.

“Captain.”  The butler had finally returned, displaying just a hint of embarrassment in a hunch of his shoulders, and carrying a letter on a tray.  “Regretfully, the Duchess is unable to attend your conference this morning.  She will contact you about rescheduling.  This was also left for you.”

Alice, impolitely, continued standing in the foyer after she tore open the envelope to read the letter, because she couldn’t do much else.  It didn’t take long to read, at least, containing neither salutation nor signature:

_Drinks on you, this time._

 

The weather was hot, and Alice was already sipping lemonade, her hair a short bright nimbus around her head.  Recently shorn, thought Elizabeth, then realized, yes – it had been less than six weeks since she last saw Alice with elbow-length waves.  Six weeks and it had somehow felt too long.

Alice - Captain Kingsleigh, rather – slid another glass, clinking with ice, across the table.  Elizabeth dropped into the empty seat and stuck her booted feet up on a settee already pointedly inclined toward her chair.

“Have a good wind?” Elisabeth asked, smug.

“Tolerable.”

“And you’re doing well with your…” she engaged in a look of very feigned innocence “…patrons?”

“If you’re going to engage in thievery every time you’d like to see me, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“How else am I, a humble pirate, to get the attention of the much-demanded Captain Kingsleigh?”

“I’ve half a mind to report you to the authorities.”

“And the other half?”

“The other half, your Majesty, urges you to choose your second.”

 

To begin with, King Elizabeth Swann had been willing to bet she was better in a duel than Captain Kingsleigh.   Certainly, each of them had been working her hands all over with calluses since first she had traded corset for breeches, and for Elizabeth that interval had been longer.

Her mistake had been thinking that Captain Kingsleigh would be a creature of fancy swordwork, but no real substance.  How many times had she bested those wearing similar finery, who had trained on padded floors and spent the bulk of their effort merely on looking good at parade rest?

But Kingsleigh understood equally the momentum of throwing one’s enemies off their guard, the grind of blade on blade, and the aching jar of a successful parry.  Nothing extraneous to her movement, and if it appeared flashy or pretty, Elizabeth knew it was simply the speed and athleticism of the arm and torso and stance driving the sword.

As they stood sword-tip to sword-tip after two rounds, Elizabeth was less and less sure that she could see victory.  With one forfeit each, Alice was looking as serene as she ever did, and Elizabeth could feel sweat slicking the grip of her palms.  It took effort to keep the tip of her blade from falling, and Alice’s wide, bejeweled sword didn’t even betray a tremor.

“Are you considering concession yet, Your Majesty?”

Dammit. The reality was, monarchs couldn’t be seen losing duels with sweat and stumbling, but they could acknowledge defeat.

With every ounce of graciousness and charm that she could muster, Elizabeth smiled and bowed.  “And what are your terms of surrender, Captain Kingsleigh?


End file.
